


His Own Man

by SnowStormSkies



Category: Tokio Hotel
Genre: Discovery, Gen, Holocaust, Nazis, Self-Discovery, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-28
Updated: 2012-09-28
Packaged: 2017-11-15 05:12:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/523517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowStormSkies/pseuds/SnowStormSkies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Georg shouldn’t be a good boy and do his homework, because it leads to horrible discoveries like this one. What does he do now? Does he want to open Pandora's Box, or does he want to keep it shut but his knowledge woefully incomplete? His whole world has been turned upside down, and now he has to choose if he wants to know more. </p><p> </p><p>  <b> Written for the prompt, Georg finds out that his great grandfather was a doctor during WW2. How does he deal with the knowledge? Submitted by iamkaa </b></p>
            </blockquote>





	His Own Man

 

**_His Own Man_ **

  
The photo is old, and creased at the corners but the face on it is clear as it was the day it was first printed. Dark eyes stare up from the card and Georg doesn’t know if they are accusing or perversely proud.  
  
The face is similar to his own; so similar, that despite the sixty years between the photo being taken and Georg examining it, it could almost be his own. If they stood by side in the same time zone, Georg is sure they could be mistaken for father and son, despite generational differences.  
  
His skin crawls with the thought of sharing a face with this man, the thought of being recognised as a descendent of the fucker. His hands shake, and his knees are weak as he leans on his desk chair for support in the face of revelation.      
  
Because his world has just fallen down around his ears because of this stupid fucking photograph…  
  
It’s nothing special on the surface – a man in a doctor’s white coat, holding test tubes in what appears to be a lab; the photo was originally black and white but time has coloured it a coward yellow, and it’s been cut to fit inside a wallet or a purse.  
  
He found it in an old photo album downstairs in the big bookcase in the study, and he had decided to keep it around – maybe he’d find something interesting on it because God knew his family wasn’t that boring. Not under the surface…  
  
But in his textbook from his history class, Georg has just found a copy of the original; and he is sickened. Absolutely disgusted by his own past glaring up at him in black and white.  
  
Because front and centre in the picture is his great grandfather, a man he has never met and his family never discuss, and he suddenly understands why. There was a very good reason for the man’s total absence from every aspect of his childhood but he never realised _why_. He always believed the lies he was told.  
Until now.  
  
The original photo in the book shows more of the lab around his relative, with high shelves crammed with books and technical equipment with glass beakers and tubes and racks of bottles of unknown substances. In the foreground, and two other men standing beside his great grandfather – both older men with glasses and close cropped hair that could be grey or blond. He can’t tell but they are both smiling, pleased with themselves about something that Georg doesn’t know and doesn’t _want_ to know.

The caption beneath the text reads, _“Captain Dieter Baumann and Major Jürgen Beck, (far left and far right) senior doctors within the SS, who conducted experiments on children and women in Auschwitz, stand beside their newly promoted colleague, Friedrich Listing (centre). Although undated, this photo is believed to have been taken around 1942, somewhere within Auschwitz itself.”_

He turns the page, and there’s a second picture of him, a second image of his relative, beside a body, elbow deep into the corpse, and the caption beneath that one is so horrifying, he has to go back and try to read it twice before he understands what it’s telling him.

_“Friedrich Listing, pictured here, removing the uterus and unborn child of a Jewish mother killed in one of the gas chambers in order to perform an autopsy on the fetus to determine the effects of a new type of gas.”_

And Georg feels like heaving.

Because that right there… that’s his heritage. That’s in his _flesh,_ and his _blood,_ and in his _DNA._

Jesus holy _fuck,_ he’s gonna be sick. He barely makes it to the bathroom down the hall, skidding to his knees on the hard tile floor as he throws up everything in his system because _what the hell. What the fucking hell._

There are no words, really.

His great grandfather, his great grandmother’s first husband, was a fucking _murderer._ He was a doctor who helped to facilitate the worst known genocide in modern history, maybe even _ever,_ and he _killed people_ and Georg is his descendant.

Georg Moritz Listing comes from a murderer and a bastard.

He’s sat in the bathroom, reeling from the revelation and his hands won’t stop shaking. He’s quivering like he’s on meth or something, and Georg prays, he fucking _prays_ that he’s dreaming because even it’s the worst possible dream he’s ever had, or ever will have, at least… at least you can wake up from a dream. Nightmares end, and terrors fade when you open your eyes.

Reality stares Georg in the face like a squatting troll under the bridge, and refuses to blink.

In his hand, he’s clutching the small photo, the miniature to the one that told him the real truth about his ancestry, and he crumples it up, throws it at the wall and it lands dead centre in the doorway, and he knows he’ll have to burn it later.

He retches again into the toilet and his face aches from the blood rush.

He tries to stand, fails, ends up cracking his wrist on the edge of the bath as he comes crashing down hard, and he swears loudly. His eyes are hot, and he feels a lot stupid and a lot ashamed and a lot _guilty_ even though he’s not entirely sure why. His wrist throbs and he prays to he’s not done something stupid or Tom’s gonna be really sad when they can’t practise together tonight.

Fuck, tonight.

The whole band is supposed to turn up in his room to stay over – his first time hosting the band all night because the twin’s mother has taken off to the city to stay with a friend, and Gordon’s out of town, playing in the capital with his band.

Gustav’s just along for the ride. As Gustav usually is.

But… God, Georg doesn’t know what to do with himself.

He’s had his world just turned upside down and shaken out, and he’s left wondering what the fuck happens now. Who can he talk to about something like this?

No way he could ever tell his friends; they’d be horrified and disgusted at Georg, and he’d lose them as fast as blinking but his grandparents and mother don’t talk about this and Georg doesn’t know if they’ll let him ask the sort of questions he needs.

His father is out of the question. For a very good reason.

“Georg?” His mother calls from the top of the stairs but Georg can’t bring himself to answer. She lied. His whole family lied to him – his great-grandfather was supposed to be a no good son of a bitch alcoholic who disappeared on his grandmother’s wedding day, leaving her at the alter with the best man in 1949.  

He _liked_ that story. Georg _likes_ the idea of jilted lovers at the alter and finding true love with the best man, and he is a _goddamn_ romantic and screw what everyone says, he _loved_ the thought of true love winning out over marrying because his grandmother was two months pregnant.  

To find out that his grandmother had been the product of a woman and _an SS doctor who murdered hundreds of people_ is a fucking slap to the face.

“Georg, are you okay?” His mother is leaning down next to him, her hand on his shoulder, staring into his face, “What’s up?”

He says nothing, wondering if his mother really knows about her own grandfather, if she ever wondered where she got her eyes from or her long fingers, or her reddish hair she’s passed down to him. Maybe she doesn’t and can he really break her heart by telling her? Can he ruin her own illusions like fate has just ruined his?

Children are not supposed to make decisions like this for their parents, he decides then and there. It fucking _sucks._

“Talk to me, sweetie…” His mother kneels next to him, hands him a tissue to wipe his mouth, but he just stares at her, lost in a whirling maelstrom of thoughts. What to say, what to say… When he makes no move to actually do anything, she takes the tissue back, holds his chin as she wipes his face for him, removing the slick sheen of sweat from his forehead, and the gross drop of bile that lingers where he missed it swiping at his face with a clumsy fist after puking. “What’s wrong?”

He points to the door, because if she doesn’t know, she’s gonna have to. He might be ruining her life but he can’t keep this to himself. He can’t.

He’s not strong enough.

She smiles as she retrieves the ball of card, asking him if it’s a love letter from someone really gross but Georg knows the minute she comprehends what the card actually holds.

“Oh.” That’s it, just _oh,_ but it’s an _oh_ that’s full of meaning because she leans back on her heels, and her hand shakes as she reaches up to absently brush back the lock of golden red hair that always falls down from her high bun.

A dancer’s bun, Georg’s grandmother always says, because she could have been one.

“Mum?” He leans his head on the bath, not quite sure what he’s asking but he suspects that his mother might have known more than he did. More than he _does,_ actually, because all he’s got is two pictures, two paragraphs of fucking sickening words, and a whole lot of questions. If she’s got answers, then he needs to know.

“I’m so sorry, Georgy.” She whispers and Georg closes his eyes, and he knows that she knows so much more than he does when she says it again. Georgy. His nickname from _way_ back when, since he was about four or five, and he wonders why she’s brought it back up now. Probably because he’s not going to like what she’s going to say. Ever.

“Mum.” He doesn’t open his eyes, and he asks again, “Mum. Mum. _Mum.”_

“What, s-sweetie?”

“Can we talk about this?” He knows that people find this sort of thing difficult but it’s so common in Germany – finding out dirty secrets from death bed confessions, diaries, and unopened boxes of photo albums years after they were put away – and he’s not the first, and not the last to suffer the whiplash of having his life ripped out from under him.

“…Yes.” His mother sighs, draws a breath in determination, and he knows she’s nodding. Her glasses are probably slipping down her nose too. “Yes, we can. We need to.”

“Yeah.” Yeah, they do. Georg has questions, but his mother has just two for now.

“How did you find out?”

“School project.” It had been an easy one, or so he’d thought. A thousand words on the social effects of the war for his Citizenship class, and he had figured he could bang most of it out on the ancient PC in his room before the twins showed up at four, and Gustav an hour later. A few hours in the library at school for some pictures and he’d be golden.

Except now… he really wasn’t.

“Oh, that’s just hysterical…” His mother sighs, and it sounds like she wants to laugh but really can’t.

“What?”

“I found out the same way. Social effects of the war on second generation war babies…” She laughs but it’s empty and catches in her throat. “Fuck my life.”

“Mum!”

“Indeed.” She tucks the lock of hair behind her ear where it fell down again, and nods. “Okay. Sorry. Come downstairs with me, and I’ll try to answer your questions.”

“Why not now?”

“Because as much as I enjoy working paediatrics, the smell of vomit is one I have come to hate. And this bathroom stinks of it.” _Oh._ Georg reaches up, flushes the toilet, and his mother nods. “Brush your teeth, and if you could bring your textbook downstairs as well….”

“Yes, Mum.” Georg watches his mother leave again, her high heels clutched in her hand where she slipped them off in the doorway, and he sighs.

Answers.

Does he want them?

He doesn’t know. Half of him is frightened of what he might learn because he doesn’t want to know how many people his blood has murdered, or how many Jews were sent to the gas chamber by his relative’s orders, or what sick experiments were conducted by his great grandfather.

But another part of him wants to know.

The little part of Georg that craves to know about the man who gave him his nose, his eyes, his jaw line, is insistent and loud, demanding knowledge and information and facts and if they have to come with bloody fingerprints on the back of horrific truth, he’ll have to take it with both hands.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away again and Georg so fucking hates his grandmother for teaching him that saying.

In this case, Georg has information offered to him, but if he takes it, he loses all innocence, all blindness to the truth. Is he willing to risk the blindfold that’s being half pulled off already? Is he really ready?

To open Pandora’s Box, or to be kept in the dark?

The photograph in his hands that his mother hand him when she left feels like it weighs as much as his own heart does at the moment… but in the end, he makes up his mind.

Truth. He needs the truth, and the whole truth, and this might be one of only a few opportunities to get it without having forcibly track down his mother and convince her to give up the ghost of the past without a fight. His mother is not one to pussy foot around, but catching her at a good time is virtually impossibly, what with her working twelve or fourteen hour shifts at the hospital every day, six days a week, and Georg having regular band practise, studio weekends, and so much homework, it’s unbelievable.

Better now than never.

“Georgy?!” His mother shouts up the stairs and he sighs, rubs his thumb over a face that’s all too similar to his own on the photograph.

“Coming.” He bellows back, and he heaves himself upright more slowly this time.

Come hell or high water, Georg is going to find out the truth…. After that, he doesn’t know how he’ll deal with it, but he’s got guitar practise with Tom, and no doubt Bill’ll have _ideas_ to share as well, and then Gustav will arrive and they can have some good band time together.

They might even watch a film, and Georg can catch some zzz’ while they’re at it.

So, his world has been turned upside down, and he’s tired, and his mouth tastes like he just licked Hikki’s litter tray out, but he’s… he’s gonna be okay. Georg fluffs up his hair with one hand and feels the guitar pick in his pocket with the other. He’s going to find out the truth, put it together in his mind, and he’ll figure it out because that’s how he works and then he’s going to teach Tom how to read sheet music, and maybe even they’ll play some new music that the twins have been talking about during the last studio session.

Georg is going to make this work.

He really is.

The past is not his master, and he is not bound by it. He is _not_ his great grandfather.

He is Georg Listing, and he is his own man.


End file.
